Tech Bytes: Megaport’s $827 million AI bet signals a new phase in the infrastructure race

The artificial intelligence boom has long been dominated by a handful of household names. Nvidia makes the chips. Microsoft, Amazon and Google provide the cloud infrastructure. Investors have largely focused on who controls the best-performing models.

But as AI adoption increases, a new bottleneck is emerging: getting computing power into the hands of companies that actually want to use it.

A number of recent moves by Megaport Ltd (ASX:MP1) reflect this shift in focus.

The Brisbane-based network connectivity company placed a trading halt on Tuesday ahead of a fully guaranteed entitlement offer of $827.3 million to fund a major AI infrastructure expansion, including a new global GPU pool and four newly signed contracts with a combined total contract value (TCV) of $458.9 million.

The amount of the salary increase is…